Technical Field
This disclosure relates to an information sharing system, an image processing apparatus, and an image processing method.
Related Art
So-called electronic information boards have been put on the market as an example of information sharing apparatuses having a touch panel mounted on a flat panel display, such as a liquid crystal display or a plasma display, or a large display having an approximate size of 40 to 60 inches using a projector.
With reference to FIG. 1, the exterior of a typical electronic information board will now be described.
An electronic information board 1000 connected to personal computers (hereinafter referred to as PCs) 1010a and 1010b is capable of displaying an image 1001 larger than images displayed on respective screens of the PCs 1010a and 1010b. Such an electronic information board is used for presentations in conferences and meetings in businesses and administrative agencies and for learning purposes in educational institutions, for example. With the touch panel mounted on the electronic information board, a direct touch on a displayed screen is input to the PC to operate the PC.
The electronic information board has functions such as allowing handwriting on the touch panel on the screen, and capturing the screen of the PC that provides application software for the electronic information board and displaying the PC screen on the screen thereof for superimposing handwriting and drawing on the touch panel on the screen.
The electronic information board is also capable of displaying image data transmitted from a remote location on the screen and adding writing to the image data on the screen. In a videoconference using the electronic information board, the image data of the screen displayed on a transmitter apparatus is thus almost simultaneously displayed on a receiver apparatus, promptly displaying any change in the screen even if the communication network therebetween uses a low-speed communication bandwidth, although the quality of the image displayed on the receiver apparatus may be compromised to some extent.
In an image display system that displays maps and so forth, to realize continuous and smooth image scrolling and scaling, an image converter may create multiple sub-image data sets gradually differentiated in pixel size based on the original image data and output each of the sub-image data sets in a multitude of small image data fragments, and the thus-created image data fragments may be stored in an image server on a network and selectively transmitted to a client apparatus as necessary when the client apparatus displays a desired part of the original image.
Alternatively, to transmit optimal data in response to a request for data from the client apparatus, the server may send the client apparatus a message storing server data mode identification information. In response to the server data mode identification information, the client apparatus may send the server information as to layered-coded data according to the processing capacity of the client apparatus, and the server may extract or generate coded data suitable for the client apparatus based on requested data mode identification information and transmit the coded data to the client apparatus. According to this configuration, the server transmits various configurations of data by extracting from the data stored in a storage unit thereof the data suited to the data request from the client apparatus.